[gmjosack]

Taxes stress me out. If the government could easily send me a bill of my sales taxes at the end of the year I might prefer that but given the system we have I rather pay at time of purchase over manual and more error prone tracking over a year.

Regardless, and maybe it's not a great distinction, I find a difference in a company not charging sales tax vs a company sending an excited e-mail about how they've found a loophole to avoid sales tax. Maybe that's just me.

[heynotcoolman]

Even ignoring the compliance issues the government would never do that. They already do not do that with income taxes--having changed the system to "pay as you go" as soon as they hiked it (WWII, then--surprise!--never cut it for peacetime) to levels where it would matter to most Americans.

Instead they "withhold," helping themselves to an interest-free loan and obscuring the bill so the average Joe grumbles a bit sometime when he sees his pay stub but has little awareness of his actual tax liability; then he jumps for joy at his "refund" April 15 when the government kindly returns his money that was never theirs in the first place. Hooray!